Mrs. English’s Second Grade Class at Holmes Elementary School in New Britain By Lauren Kenney

Environment  Twenty three children.  They were arranged for the most part in four rows.  Décor consisted of many teacher and commercially produced. There were only three math posters. There were a few simple student worksheets displayed.  Resources consisted of many books and assessable math manipulatives.

Instruction  Children worked individually at their desks during the lesson. + - = + - =  Base Ten blocks were handed out to each child and the children were allowed to first “play” with them.  Then Mrs. English worked out problems, first individually then as a class. The problems were displayed on the blackboard and overhead projector.

Objectives  The lesson objectives were for the students to better comprehend the concept of trading ones for tens, tens for one hundreds and vice-versa for addition and subtraction. The majority of the examples were subtraction.

HTO

Evaluation  Mrs. English walked around the classroom to check on individual children. She allotted for student to student interactions when one child or the other was either struggling or excelling.

Discourse  Student-Teacher: Mrs. English walked around the classroom to check on each of the children’s representations of the numbers with their blocks.  Student-Student: When the problem was given to the children, many of them were unsure. The few children who did understand well were instructed to help two or three of those who didn’t. The children were also allowed to recreate what they made at the beginning of class for everyone to see.

Results  From my own experience with manipulatives I knew how helpful they could be, this lesson was a great reinforcement of their success.  I also saw how easy it was for a teacher to get caught up in discipline and order. Yet her poor classroom management skills created a desire in me to strengthen my skills as a leader to help me as a teacher